Murmur Muck had been back in Old Rose Harbour not one hour before she realised that things were not going to go the way she had planned. For a start, the house she had been squatting in previously was now boarded up- the doors and windows blinded by thick planks of wood unwilling to yield to a small and desperate woman. The rain spat down onto her head like flecks of saliva as she hauled the soggy material holding what little possessions Murmur had deemed necessary to bring with her over her shoulder and she walked on from the house simply because there was nothing else for her to do.

By the pier, she liberated the coin purse of a slightly better dressed human than most- though found it as sparse as even the most raggedy of merchants, much to her disappointment.There would be enough, of course, for a drink or two but not much else. If she could find another place to squat then things would be a mite easier. And a job would be of course be useful- something honest, if it was going, something dishonest if it wasn't.

The fish market was the best place for Murmur, of course, though not bustling in the rainy season. Haggard fisherman come in from rough seas did their best to flog their wares, while the fishwives crowed without their usual enthusiasm. The atmosphere was rather tired but the salty sometimes stale smell of fish called out to something within Murmur's core- generations of Muck's selling fish were with her.

And beyond a vast expanse of rough water, beyond the grey sky that blanketed the harbour would be Mugroba. As unknown and exotic as the smell of fish and opression of the people was all too familiar.

It was very rare that Murmur's thoughts would turn to the man who fathered her, but there it was. Would he be a fisherman too? Or was she such a Muck child that her father was nothing like her? Many of the men her mother had consorted with over the years had been the most unsavoury of characters, like the man who had locked her in the outhouse for two days- though there had been pockets of kindness, like the soft, tired man who'd taught her her letters and numbers with a patient heart- more patient than it would have been had his hand not been stroking the warm thigh of Murmur's older sister underneath her dress. Murmur surprised herself by hoping her father was a kind mind- it was unlike her to care one jolt about his character.

She paused to study the eyes of a sea bass laid out on a table and drew her oversized man's overcoat tighter around her shoulder, looking into the shimmering glassy eyeball like so many wick fortune tellers had done into crystal balls- but found she couldn't gauge any reading of the future.

Havek had affixed a little note to Shook’s brass tea kettle. Formal things like this, he almost wished there had been white paper, clean and pure, something so impossibly empty looking it made every stroke of ink look stark and serious. They had none of that, though. Hava settled for a damp receipt abandoned on the floor. Vanilla and star anise on the back. Farewells on the front.

To Any Who’s Eyes May Come Upon This:

How curious I would wash upon these shores, your shores! Strange thing, how the land isn’t too different from the sea. Beguiling things with slick eyes and massive teeth just beyond your nose in the murk, and all of that! (Strange-eyed beasts prowl everywhere, nowadays, who said it could be any different here? Here, in this wet dark corner of this wet dark corner of your fair nation?) Forgiveness flows from me quick as a honey from the rocks. I will forget nothing, as ever. May the lives of the wicked be brief. May you be with the gods soon.

Sana’hulali – Hava.

Post Scriptum: I sincerely hope the stain on the floorboards will not be too much of a bother. They say lye works best on blood, but I have tried everything. Perhaps it doesn’t want to be forgotten at all.


Sana’hulali was such a strange word. Hello and goodbye. Meeting for the first time and already leaving; bidding farewell while welcoming back.

After it was all over those weeks back, after he could move, he’d washed his hands under the spout of that tea kettle. Absolutely caked in blood, in his own, in somebody else’s. The healing had been bad, bad, bad. A spiderweb of scars swallowed his shoulder, all the nerves from there down weak. But these things happen. It wasn’t bad, it was just different. (Though Hava had never liked different.)

Havek did love the docks. They were the only slice of Old Rose Harbor he could handle. The other parts were too dark and deep these days. The alleys, high wooden shacks, all of that. They were the same, fish ports, from the crags of Gior to the dusty plains of Hesse. The faces and languages might be different but that very nice fish smell never wavered. Legions of sick-eyed dead things laid out in rows and rows, limpid squids stretched to never ever dry in the damp air. Dead-eyed things! Nacreous fish eyes, rheumy and glassy. It all so much better because he was so startlingly not dead. Imagine that. He could see (kind of), he could still walk (with a bit more effort than usual), he still had all his limbs (the right arm wasn't worth much anymore, but still. it was very much there and wasn’t that just grand).

But there was still blood in him, moving about and doing pertinent things, still breathing smoke-salt thick air, but wasn’t it somehow – somehow?. Heart pounding, lungs moving, and it was all so very nice. A dull hum buzzed over his skin, under all the layers of shirts and massive leather coat. The buttons were undone, making him look a bit like one of those fish slit from belly to gills.

So much shuffling around the fish market, peering as thick bodied red fish, shiny as unpolished rubies. Fiddling with the tentacles of a big octopus patiently occupying an entire table, big in the way he thought of gods as big. Slimy discs of suckers clung weakly at his fingers, leaving a rime of viscous octopus-stuff. Funny thing, watery muscles curling around his hand. Trying to eat him or ask him for help, whatever, it all sounded the same in people, in fish. Still alive, only a bit. He lingered there until the fish woman attending it shooed him away. And he did move away, regretful.

Drifting, blind and aimless as all those deep sea creeping things with their milk-white eyes. The harbor was grey and when it wasn’t grey it was people and when it wasn’t people, it was fish. Nothing was quite as clear anymore, everything behind just a bit of a fog. But it was better than really being, or seeing this. So many small dark girl hands splitting things open up the belly, dainty fingers twisting red fish insides off of the back of fish spines. It fell away so easy when the fish were tiny, and when they were big she’d scrape at it with knife. And cup them in her hands and let stray cats drag bits of it away to their cat places. Bells don’t ring there, wind doesn’t blow there – it was all in that funny place across the ocean, in Mugroba, beneath the eaves of memory. If he ever went back, Ekua would still be there. Ekua crouched outside the hut, dress scrunched up to her knees, feeding the cats fish entrails. Things worked like this.

How like him to get so wrapped up in memories far away girls, not-there girls, he didn't notice real living breathing ones right at his shoulder. He always tried not to, it was never good to. But she was there and her hair was so fluffy and bowed over a sea bass. She smelled like salt and dust, or perhaps everything else did. And she was small. A small dark girl thing like that, Hava couldn’t help but crane his neck over her, blinking owlishly down at the nape of her neck. All these dead things about, it was good to look at not-so dead things, too.

Murmur felt a trill coarse down her spine and her muscles tense like an animal ready to bolt. A field. How strange that humans could slip by unobserved but that strange fizz Murmur knew so little about cleaved to wicks and golly’s like a second skin, like a second shadow made of light and not darkness. Perhaps to have a field meant never having to be lonely.

The field was weak, unobtrusive like the timid buzz she felt holding Fendin in the market.

Wick, not galdori- a meager sense of relief.

But that was of course no cause for relaxation; left in the sun too long fish stank regardless of breed and someone behind you in Old Rose Harbour could be much the same, one couldn't afford to treat motives as innocent. Murmur shifted her body, moved along from the sea bass, a hand guarding the battered leather coin purse- the other tracing the handle of her fish gutting knife stashed in the pocket of her coat.

At this angle the man was far more observable, and in her own unsubtle fashion she scrutinized this stranger. Older than her, very tall but busted up- Murmur’s past was filled with worse odds than this one. To look at the scars carved into dark Mugrobi flesh was to guess that his world was a brutal one; like the rats she’d watch her brothers catch, the Muck boys used to set terriers on the rat and neighborhood children would bet money on how long poor vermin would last. The creature always lasted longer than anyone expected, but would inevitably succumb in the end- mauled face spilling hot blood and brain onto the street as the children cheered and the Terrier yapped in delight. Murmur always routed for the rat. At least they wore most of their ugliness on the outside, not like the Terrier who’s sharp teeth lurked beneath soft white fur, not like the galdori in their fine clothes and fancy haircuts hiding poison in polished smiles.

The flash of a memory would not, however, show on Murmur’s face. There was no softness in her features- she was not the same little child who’s podgy fingers would hover over the ripped corpse of a rat, heart brimming with pity. Circumstances had grown more dangerous, more dire with time and Murmur had changed accordingly, allowed herself to be moved and molded by ever changing currents like the rough seas. Old Rose was not a place for chit chat or small talk, especially not with strangers- they were not golly’s exchanging cards and insisting that they ‘really must do afternoon tea at some point’.

This one, she mentally estimated, would more than likely have no money. Unless kings dressed like beggars in Mugrobi. But Murmur could pride herself on being an equal opportunities thief. But only if the should the moment present itself, she could only ever justify stealing from fellow lower races if the circumstance was too good to miss; a coin purse on a thin strap, wallet poking from a pocket as if to greet her.

And should Havek’s eye catch hers, he would see only a warning- a silent jut of a chin. Murmur, in her own way announced to Havek that if he took it upon himself to try anything that she was the kind of rat who fought back.

And of course she moved, they always moved. Someone moved. She, whoever she was, something dusky and perfumed in curry would skitter away like a frighted mouse. Or he’d gather his wits and rip himself back to the present, to the here and now, not in a fuzzy place half-across the ocean.

He was here, in the Harbor of our Discontent. Not some sun-soaked backstreet with frowsy strays and bleating goats. In the rain, in the grey, the Harbor splayed out in corridors of veins, bursting the seams with cutthroats and cutpurses. How good of her to move. But how he didn’t want her too. Just her standing there, head bent, with her hair and the back of her neck, that was perfectly enough. All these pasty fishwives weren’t exactly the same. Huge pale arms and flat eyes. He liked that one specifically. So like her, so not like her. Toasted nut skin and pale eyes made remembering a lot easier.

This almost-dead nonsense was making him bolder than he knew. He moved after her. For why? Could he honestly summon the gall to speak? His hand slipped into the mouth of his swollen satchel, calloused fingers fretting the edges of her scarf.

Brittle faced! How nice. The kind of face on all small children skulking down to the river, dark-eyed and serious-faced. He wanted to shake this girl and tell her that he didn’t want anything, nothing bad, just for her to stay still for a few minutes and ignore him. Like the wealthier people liked paintings or poems.

Threading between pincers of shoulders and bustling bodies, eye narrowed against all this hissing rain. He want to say, please? “Pe’a, please—“ He just wanted to look, just wanted to be certain. All these names and faces, worn down fuzzy by time and distance. Square pegs shoved in round holes. All these old things he kept had to fit somewhere. Hava wouldn’t snatch at her cuff or wrist, too abrasive that was (as if chasing girls through crowded fish markets was much better).

“P’ea, girl! I think I –“ You what, now? “—do I know you? I think I know you, somewhere…” Not quite confident, that voice. Cobwebby and tenuous, not quite there.

Murmur blinked, once, twice. It wasn’t threatening the way he spoke to her, but there was razor wire in men’s smiles- any child of Lena Muck, loosest woman in the painted ladies of vienda, knew that. Some of them waited, brought sweets and flowers, told jokes and then kicked her mother about the bedroom like a ragdoll. She pulled the coat tighter around her, fist tighter around the knife.

“Well, I know I don’ know ye anywhere,” she harrumphed, coiled so tense it was any wonder the words managed to escape at all. Were this an inn, had Murmur a few more drink swilling in her stomach she may have felt different, more open- the way she had been that first time with Seth, and that had turned out alright hadn’t it?

That had been luck though, more luck than Murmur’d had in years and it didn’t do to go around making a habit of it and at this moment Murmur felt like shell of a clam, clamped rigid around soft meat inside, not an oyster though- there was no pearl cupped inside. The man ought to know this. “So if ye do know me it ent in this lifetime, mister.”

She ought to leave, just walk away. She didn’t know this man, didn’t owe him anything, couldn’t work out his motives and that was dangerous as heck. But if the golly’s had made her leave her Vienda then Murmur would be damned if she left her docks for a wick, not when she needed a job more than anything. It would rain tonight, Murmur could smell it on the air, acidic from industry- she needed money and shelter more than she needed to humor the Mugrobi man staring at her,

And he was staring. Tilting her head she frowned further. The way his one gold eye darted over her was unsettling for someone who did her best to go by unnoticed- and it wasn’t her teeth that was doing it either, she probably had more teeth than havek at any road, more teeth than half the tumbles in Old Rose when it came down to it. But if it wasn’t revulsion, what could it be?

“Please! Please! Tumbles charge fer this, ye know,” she said looking at him closer, a hint of mocking in her voice. “But they’re willin’ an’ I ent. If ye’ve been in Old Rosie longer than five minutes ye’d know ye could spit an’ hit a peepshow within five paces. I suggest ye try that- it’s just me an’ the fish by the docks ere.”

“I don’t…” he blinked slow, owlish. “I do not want that, no. It is a callous and evil thing, that.” Hava’s brows pinched, as if the idea of baffled and repulsed him. He’d winced a bit the at intoning of please, please -- but aside from that, his dark face was barren of anything bordering on emotion. He tilted his head, scrutinizing her, like a twisting radio dial trying to sift through static. “I meant no offense, miss. It is jus’ –“

He bent down to be closer at eye-level with the girl. She was so small, Hulali bless her. Ekua was darker. Ekua’s hair was black, blue-black. Ekua’s eyes were a bit greener around the pupil, that pale phosphorus green the ocean turned under the sun. Ekua was softer, smoothed over with babyfat from two babies. He only remembered colors and shapes. These details got blurrier and blurrier each time she was called up behind his eyelid. That yellow eye was narrowed and razor precise as it slid over her features.

“I think I know you. Somewhere.”

Somewhere not being here. Not in this lifetime, mister. Mugroba was someplace different, at this point some sort of Otherland or Antelife or whatever people were calling that place you went when you weren’t anymore. If you went anyplace at all. Hava thought yes, you most certainly did, and if things went well enough he’d get rolled of a dock in foreign waters end up back on Mugrobi shores, be it by floating or bits of him in a fish belly.

“You could be right. In another lifetime. Perhaps. You seem like a different creature entirely.” He spoke slow, blankly, as if he wasn’t quite sure what words went where. Mincing too sharply over all the little syllables, too clear and clean. He peered down at her flatly. “Someone from someplace other than this. Over the sea and all that, miss.” That was confirmed, then. Not an Ekua at all. Leave, then? He thought not. Chasing small harsh-faced things among all these dirty fish. It was all so rude, it was.

“Aye,” he hissed through his teeth after a tenuous stretch of silence. “Epa'ma, did I frighten you?”

Murmur shrugged at his wide-eyed- well wide eye- horror and vehement denial of all things tumble related. “Some people ent got no choice…needin’ to eat ent evil,” she felt her own stomach rumble at this. “Just cause it ent fer me don’t mean I mind ye mistakin me fer a tumble…” How strange that this man, this mug man should be so upstanding, talking about morality in such a way. She hadn’t spoken long to Dem but he’d been the same. Her father- he wouldn’t have been like that, would he? Her mother had never said, but Murmur had always assumed Lena Muck had been paid for services rendered.

“And ye needn’t worry about frightening me- I don’ scare that easy,” she lied. “Ent got no business te be goin’ about in Old Rosie if a spot o’ conversin with a stranger makes me piss me pants.”

At sixteen or so, she’d liked to think of herself as fearless. But these days it all seemed to frighten her, the big things like the government and dying for the resistance and the littler ones like hunger and water. The fear was the same whatever the context, so much so that taking on the biggest man in the bar or being sent to the gallows was the same as crossing the street or passing a homeless child, and though it scared her Murmur felt like she could do it all. That was true bravery perhaps, living despite your fears…getting on.

But what he’d said…over the sea and all that. Murmur liked the sound of that, to be far, far away, to kid herself that somewhere was better than here, when in all likelihood it was all just the same. You couldn’t step in the same river twice but the land was staid and stagnant.

“Maybe I look like someone back where ye live- an' ye gotta be from Mugroba, ent anybody else I ever spoken to says 'please' or 'I meant no offence miss' te me or got me talkin bout past lives but Mugs,” she shrugged.

“I ent ever looked like anyone before…my ma raised me. Anaxi, red hair ye know…an’ my brothers an’ sisters. They were all the same…or similar. But not me...that could be it, I just look like someone...”

Like a man in Mugroba, under the warm sky- away from all this rain, shoulders dark and broad, the land beneath his feet all his. Like others too, brothers and sisters and cousins and aunts and uncles- a line stretching back across desserts. Murmur had carried the past lives of Mucks with her for years, grey and pallid, shimmering only slightly with eel slime but there was another world, one that burst with colour Murmur had quite forgotten was a part of her too. But the colors ran, the sand was not tangible like fish bones…her grip on it was tenuous at best.

“I’m Murmur,” she said to Havek. Not out of pleasantries, not out of wanting to know this strangers name or anything about him- but as a statement, announcing this fact to both the man and the world. “Someone else before, maybe- if all that past life stuff is anythin te go by, probably someone better if ye wanna go in te it. But I'm Murmur now.”

She didn’t know why, but she felt like adding ‘sorry’ to the end of her sentence. Like who she was would be a disappointment. But that wasn’t right. She liked being Murmur Muck, even if she didn’t like much else. Liked seeing the crap in the world through her own blue eyes, liked whistling breaths through the gap where her teeth should be and pulling apart fish bones with her own dexterous fingers.

She was Murmur now. He liked that. He couldn’t keep his sudden scowl at the justification of whoring; a twitch of a watery smile took his lips. Could have been something else entirely, once.

Ekua always told him that. That’s why she didn’t feel bad about any of the nonsense that happened with him. We’d been together, once, she would say with perfect conviction, while popping her head out from the wash basin during a bath he shouldn’t have been helping with, letting down her dress straps for whichever baby to suck, blinking up from a pot of fish stew. Serpentine eyes would always peer up at him very seriously, saying something like, I knew you’d come for me one day, I just didn’t know who you were.

“Ea, I think you do look like...someone. Someone familiar. It could be all the fish. Her jara was a fisherman. It all looks the same after awhile.” She certainly was not an Ekua at all, not with a name like that.

His hand twitched in his satchel, the leather strap slipping down his shoulder as if he were about to procure something to show her. There was certainly a water-stained spectrograph of the girl buried among everything in there. Under headscarves and hedge clippers and stolen bushels of herbs, her grave young face was frozen, blinking up in surprise from a simmering pot of something, a tired smile quirking her lips. Too intimate to show to anyone, that. She would just have to believe him.

“Murmur,” he said, as if it were some new strange fish laid out in the market. “I am...” Hava, cut off the sharp sliver at the end to be safe, but – “Havek. A Murmur and a Havek. Those are things, not names at all, are they?” Hava – Havek – squinted down at her. He supposed Hava -- good Hava Alu, trying so hard to be noble and quiet and keep a pleasant job that didn’t hurt anybody – was left dead on that apothecary floor. Blight their eyes, all of them. Still peering at her too closely, dissecting her mother’s Anaxi blood from her father’s. The eyes could be his, whoever he was.

“You do not look too Anaxi, miss. Not pallid like a grub. Your father? Jara? He was from Mugroba? Aye, ya needn’t worry about being something better before – half Mugrobi blood is better than most here have it,” he bowed his head, acquiescing. “Who knows, you could have been just a fish before. Not a girl at all.”

"I might have been an eel or a bander wolf," she grinned- eels were hard to catch and pin down, bander wolfs had all of the power in sharp claws. Neither were weak and Murmur hoped some part of a past life was still with her. "Don't know my father...but from the looks of me I'm guessin he ent a Gioran. Probably is a mug."

And it was perhaps the eel that watched through careful blue eyes the satchel at Havek's arm. The way he held it as though something precious made Murmur want it- they had taken away all she had, the debt collectors and the scavengers and she wanted someone else's, wanted money, wanted food. Humans did nothing but want and want, tried to take it at the tip of a sword or with the hands they were given, calloused by work. But either way they rarely received it. The hunger in her belly surfaced in her eyes as she watched the satchel. She could almost smell something of value.

"Havoc? Means trouble don't it...well I can't hold yer name against ye- not when I'm anythin' but quiet. Nice te know ye, Trouble," Murmur spat on her hand as was her custom and extended it towards the man.

What his next move would have been Murmur could only guess at as she felt the slick tentacle of a squid brush past her outstretched palm and into
Hevek's face.

The woman on the other end of this squid attack was a plump, hard faced woman, skin covered with pox scars like craters in her face. The fat on her bare arms flapped as the squid was jiggled in front of Havek and there was no small hint of desperation in her voice as she addressed him.

"Look! Ya like this fella dontcha...good fried, baked, stewed. An' half price. Caught fresh today!"

Murmur knew, judging by the state of the creature that this was not the case. She knew the fish wife too, her type was always the same- desperate with too many mouths to feed back home, breasts and stomach sagging, anything for a sale- anything to clothe the kids with their lice and the baby with his colic. She tried her best to stay out of sight as the woman continued.

"Half price? Two fer the price o' one. We got scallops, cockles, mussels...anythin' ye need deary by the pound, only takes a tally or two."

Havek had been too busy blinking down at the girl's small, spit-spattered hand to notice the fishwife looming. What a funny gesture, that. Anaxas was such a strange and dirty place, curious dirty customs. He could remember, very faintly, in the backstreets of Thul Ka all the old wika mamas' seizing him by his shoulders and aggressively kissing him on both cheeks. Hello for one side of his face, goodbye on the other. He smiled so oddly, admiring that tiny dark hand as if she had just offered him some small fluffy animal. Was going to take it, if awkwardly, in his scarred fingers.

But this beastly fishwife barreling at him, that hand was forgotten in favor of ducking out of reach.

"Epa'ma, no, sorry, I --" soft voiced, even in the middle of this rumbling fish marker where everyone had to shout. What a sick-eyed, nacreous pink thing it was. He wasn't squeamish enough to wince at the wet tentacles slicked against his chin, but that massive fishwife was enough to send him stumbling back a pace or two. He had no coin to spend on dead things -- at least none he could bear to be parted with -- and no place to keep or cook a squid, anyhow. Especially not queasy looking ones greying with rot.

"Thank you, domea, but I -- I am not interested, madam, please, p'ea --" Bowing his head, thick ropes of hair falling in his face. Painfully polite even in the face such an onslaught of stinking squid. Stumbling back, leather satchel strap slipping down the top of his arm and catching loose in the crook of his elbow.

The fishwife saw his politeness as softness- in Old Rose how could she not?- and stepped further forward. "Won' find a deal like this one! Not from any other stall!"

Murmur, little dirty urchin that she was, ducked away from the fish wife's glance and turned her own back to the satchel leaning perilously close to being an opportunity too good to miss. Her fingers skipped through fish guts like twirling confisalto dancers and over loose satchel straps like a flying fish skimming over waves.

She watched Havek, poor strange Havek who didn’t belong in this place any more than those dead sea bass didn’t belong on tables on the shore being accosted by this woman and struck. It wasn’t Murmur’s fault he didn’t belong, it wasn’t her fault that his face was so messed up the way it was- she was doing what she had to do, nothing more or less. The satchel was lifted, slipped as though buttered from his arm in the furor.

“Trust me Muggy, yer pratically robbin’ me blind!” said the fish wife, desperation turning to agression. I’m crazy te offer this deal and yer crazy if ye miss it.”

Murmur didn’t stop to congratulate herself, but ducked into the crowd- spectaral, she could have been the ethereal ghost of a girl on the docks were her stench and her spit not so earthly. Short enough to weave herself into the crowd, she became part of the thick tapestry of old rosie, grey coat, brown skin- nothing stood out, her colours dull, dull- she had to belong here in this grey even if Havek didn't. Not quite running but too fast to be walking she dodged carts and elbows and didn’t stop to think until she’d reached the cover of an alley far from the market. The stachel still held triumphantly in her vice like grasp.

"No, really! I -- "

The sight of that good-natured, if flustered look about him going up in smoke bordered on terrifying. That missing weight on his arm was like the dull ache of a phantom limb. It was gone, oh my --

His head snapped after the girl, like a dog scenting a rabbit. He didn't want to be angry, he really and truly didn't. But alas -- he was. Strange-eyed beasts prowl everywhere, nowadays, he'd written. Perhaps that was what made these beasts so much more horrible than usual; they came in all kinds of shapes, hulking fishwives and pixie-thin boys in apothecaries and blue-eyed girls in fish markets. Harmless things. They were so easily trusted.

Usually, Hava would take ages to politely worm his way through a crowd. Bowing and muttering apologies, taking great care to not to bump any shoulders. All this decorousness was gone. Hava bolted. He'd been fast, once, across the sea, younger legs so ibis-long they made other boys' knees ache to just to look at them. Perhaps he could be fast now.

Murmur's shock of dingy red hair darting among the grey bodies of the crowd, movement so nimble and practiced. A din of shouting shot up behind him as he carved a path through the masses, dark bird hands gripping stragglers by the shoulder and shoving them out of his path. There would be time for absolutions after he got the satchel back, after he got Ekua back. All those little bits of her, bits of his most cherished memories at the bottom of that bag, ransacked by grubby hands and spilled in the gutters! He wouldn't have it, not on this girl's life he wouldn't have it.

Scanning the area for signs of life and saw nothing but mildew on brick walls, a soggy old mattress, a rusted perambulator and old newspapers littering the ground, Murmur was satisfied- there was nothing more demoralizing than to loose a steal to someone else.

She breathed heavy, plunging her hand into the satchel, without any kind of reverence for the contents within. It smelt of far away, she thought peering inside- like dried herbs and the ocean. She’d stolen enough over the years to know that what a man carried around him was indicative of his character, whether he was a miser, or generous, a family man or all alone.

An old book, it could be sold- not for much of course as humans had no business reading anything, something in a bottle…it smelt alcoholic, the glimmer of a brass box caught her eye but contained only old letters in a language more foreign to her than the Estuan she could read with no small degree of difficulty. The box could be sold.

What she hoped was a leather wallet contained nothing but strange contraptions Murmur had never seen before, but leather was worth something these days. The cloth headscarf was not, but seemed nice enough- she stuffed it into her pocket, a souvenir of the strange Mug man perhaps.

It was no large haul, Murmur was hardly going to be able to retire to a modest but comfortable home back in the painted ladies, but maybe she’d eat the day after tomorrow. There was a picture of a woman too, mother, sister, lover, friend? Murmur didn’t stop to study her face. Her memory was worthless to anyone but Havek, a picture may be worth a thousand words but you couldn’t live in a house built of words or put them in a cooking pot no matter how many there were. Instead she felt for something smooth, slick as silver and sharp. A machete. Murmur pulled it by the handle, there was blood on the blade. Who’s blood? Not the blood of meddlesome thieves, Murmur hoped. All the same, best to keep it hidden, best it was out of Havek’s hands.

Hava ducked through the crowds, slipping through the crush of bodies like smoke. It was so important, all those little bits and pieces of him lost at the bottom of that satchel. It was trash to anyone else, trash, it wouldn't ...

The bodies thinned out as the path took him further from the fish market, following that too small mop of hair and greyness through the streets. Was it her at all? Some other frowsy red haired boy or something, nothing in his pocket but dust and knives. Whoever it was, they ducked into some dank corridor of an alley. He followed, couldn't help it

He slowed to a measured stalk at the lip of the alley; in addition to all those sweet memorandums, there were sharp things abounding in that satchel. Grey pall in the rain, stuffed tight into a bleak vein of an alley, sharp things -- but Murmur wasn't half as horrifying as Naomi's father, could she be? Little mice and foxes and dogs all snapped fingers off at knuckle when backed into corners. Perhaps. Eels and banders, she'd said.

"P'ea...p'ea!" he called, cautiously, squinting into the grey pall, the shade of high bricks walls shrouding the alley in dark. His fingers slipped along the mossy bricks as he edged deeper into the alley. "Murmur, girl, p'ea! I --"

And she was crouched among all the mire and she was digging through it like it was a refuse bin, rotten apples cores and fish bones to be tossed into the street and the music box and her hair, where was her hair? Her scarf, wicked --

"What are you -- that is -- none of it! None of it is useful to you! Put it down, do not --!" Anger had flickered into something shocked and utterly helpless, floored. The words didn't seem to fit together, cobbled together roughly. It was harsh and violating, as if she were rooting her grubby paws around in the wet walls of his lungs.

Murmur’s head darted up at the sound of a voice. He’d followed, they did that sometimes- when they thought they could fight her, when she’d taken all they had. Murmur would be almost impressed at his speed were it not for the thud of her heart rising upwards inside her chest. The machete was to hand and she was backed into a corner- nowhere to run, unless it was through Havek and she wasn’t sure she had it in her to do that. Not to a wick. Not over a brass box and a handful of leather.

All the same, she wasn’t about to risk it. Not a handful of her teeth, not a chance for more bruises when her eye was getting back to normal and she didn’t ache all over. If she gave all his stuff back there was no guarantee that he wouldn’t hurt her. In Old Rosie you stole before someone had a chance to steal from you, hit out at someone so they couldn’t hit you first.

Her fist grasped the machete and she held it in front of her, face sour as a lemon, chin jutting. Now if only her fool hands could stop shaking.
“Hesta, Trouble,” she said, both hands on the machete, her voice quivering slightly. “Ye shouldn’t have followed me. Ent hardly worth it.”
She picked up the bag, to signal she wasn’t about to give it back. The brass box. Eating tomorrow. Rats clawed at the fish carcasses, there wasn’t anything better and this was something.

“Look, I sure am sorry about yer stuff, truly I am. But I ent got no choice, see? An’ I don’ wanna have te cut you. But if ye try anythin’ by my life I will. So stand aside.”

For the love of all that was sweet and blessed. How old was this girl? Thirteen, sixteen, twenty two? Sometimes he wished there was a fire in him, a flare of rage to compel him to rip the satchel from her arm, begone, disappear into the thick grey fog and never linger around tiny dark girls ever again.

“You have no idea –“ his hands shivered out a few inches, not quite mindful of the machete clutched in her hands. It mattered, but it didn’t matter, wasn’t more important than the contents of that bag slung in the crook of her elbow. It was a blessed thing he kept any scrap of money sewed into the walls of his “P’ea…I…what do you need. Money? Or…or food? Jus’…jus’…” His cool and clipped grasp of Estuan was slipping down a slope to a jumbled mess of syllables. “The herbs, the book, the mor..phine…whatever it is! Take it. P’ea, p’ea, p’ea – “ the massive boat oars of his hands were pressed over his chest, the gesture bordering on penitent. “Jus’… I need …”

Her hair, her scarf, her face, her letters. These things confirmed she had ever been there at all.

Hava didn’t keep many worldly things. He carried his life on his back like a snail, creeping from one place to the next, these few articles constant and solid when nothing else was. His mouth felt so empty of words, whole expression blank. Just that satchel, just those things, they were necessary and dire as breathing. He wasn’t frightened, or angry, or much of anything at all. If it came down to it, yes – he would use magic, though he loathed to. Scared sodden little rat-thing. I ent got no choice. It would be too much like hurting her, like hurting some tiny girl-child.

“P’ea, I…I will not hurt you, girl, Murmur, I…I…I couldn't.”

She was probably just a vulture before. Nothing special at all.

Murmur didn’t believe him. Desperate as he looked, people always hurt other people- you couldn’t ever give your word on that. She trusted people who promised not to hurt her least of all. She didn’t lower the blade. Blue eyes were hard and icy as she surveyed Havek. He didn’t even look angry- just sad, it wasn’t about pride. She almost didn’t believe him.

Murmur chewed her lip. “Look, don’…I mean, next time don’ let on it’s so important te ye.”

She held the bag out, open so he could see the contents slightly better- but next to the machete in case he tried anything. “Ye’ve pretty much told it’s worth moren you wanted te tell me. I need money…an’ I know now ye’ll give me more fer this than any buyer I could find-no matter ‘ow daft he were…don’ do that next time.”

She put a hand in the satchel, closed her fist around the picture- hoping she had the measure of the situation correctly, the reason why Murmur could take the book and the herbs and the drug. “’Ow much is she worth, Havek?” More than Murmur had ever been to anyone, that was for sure. She couldn’t imagine anyone keeping tokens of her, guarding them against thieves with desperation- her mother was supposed to love her and she’d sold all of her toys long ago. Murmur had never even sat for a spectrograph picture; humans couldn’t work them, finding someone who could was an unnecessary expense.

In her head, she mentally calculated how much would get her comfortably through today and tomorrow. Luckily for Havek, she’d had a thrifty childhood- worn hand me downs, eaten curried fish guts leftover from the shop. “Six shills. I wan' six shills…an’ if ye think yer getting’ back yer sharp things in this alley then yer dumber than I am.”

“But I do not have...“ brittle voice flickered away into nothing.

That placid face, snapshot in black and white. Thick nimbus of hair crowning her, dress strap slipping down one shoulder, the tops of her breasts exposed from the way she was bent over the soup, beaded choker clinging to the curve of her throat, teacup saucer eyes peering out at him with a hint of amusement. She was smiling, though she rarely smiled. Did she find this funny, too?

His good hand gravitated to the spectrograph like a moth to candleflame, delicate. Not as if he was going to snatch it away, more like he was trying to confirm the reality of the situation. Slivered golden eye wide and blank, as if he was seeing the picture for the very first time. Such a tenuous memory, pinched in two grubby fingers. How callous, how Anax, bribing someone with something so – well, not worthless. Something so unbelievably important.

“P’ea, be merciful! Sell the rest, sell all you can, just leave me with the memory, p’ea. I have nothing to give, and she...” She, annunciated so soft and delicate, as if he might bruise the syllable if he was too rough with it. “...she is worth nothing to you. Give her back, p’ea. So callow, so savage. You are surely Anaxi beyond the roots of your hair, girl. Wicked, it is.” Not harsh, those words, but thick with disappointment – as if yes, the possibility that should could have been something better once was quite real.

He leaned in close, dangerously close, to peer into the depths of the satchel. He blinked flatly at the machete as if he didn’t mind its close proximity to his face at all. It all seemed quite in order, the brass box, the Almanac, the botanical encyclopedia, the case of syringes...

Hava snapped back, away, as if bitten. Panic, oh panic, flashed over his stoic features. His singular eye darted around the shadows of the alleyway, desperately searching for something. “Her scarf – where did you -- .... where is it? Maguala...” he hissed, eye narrowed and critical as a serpent's. “What did you do with it?”

Murmur now, coming in and destroying Ekua of then.

The world was callow and savage, Murmur had done her best to adapt- but it hadn’t been quite enough. His words should have been water off a duck’s back, but every so often a droplet clung to a feather. She didn’t know what that word…Maguala….meant, but it didn’t sound too friendly. She had to stop stealing from lower races, Havek was a wick- just like Fendin when he’d been in her arms not so long ago.

“Ye said ye’d do anythin’…ye said I could have anythin’…money,” Murmur stressed. “I need money.” It wasn’t fair that she should be angry, but he’d offered the damn money in the first place. Strange to be such an indignant thief.

But it wasn’t a case of wanting, it was a case of painful need- Murmur needed to go home, needed to know if Fendin was alright, needed her mother and her shop and Seth and Muriel and all her brothers and sisters. Where were her memories stored in a bag? Where was the part of her mother Murmur could keep with her, gone to debt collectors or still at the bottom of the Arova. Why should Havek get to keep this woman with him?

She thought of this, and tried to be angry. It was easy to be angry with and steal from the galdori- but this was different.

But money was cold, hard noose tight around her neck.

“The scarf’s in my pocket,” she spat. “Don’t worry, I ent got it dirty with my Anaxi hands all over it.” The gollies hated her because she was too human, her brothers thought her strange because she was too Mugrobi, Havek called her wicked and hated the too Anaxi part of her…Murmur couldn’t win it seemed.

“I’m not givin ye anythin’….til ye give me somethin’ in return.”

"I told you, I do not --" Nothing to give, beyond that too delicate phial of...whatever that wicked opiate was. There was no way he could let something so precious and delicate be lost in strange hands. The same for the morphine, too.

How insufferable, how perverse all of this was. There was very little use for the whole Mugrobi idea of who the scarf rightfully belonged to. Back home the appeal of but it is mine could hold some water, driving pins into even the lowliest urchin’s sense of honor could get you somewhere. Not here.

It wasn’t that he was unfamiliar with the idea of stealing…he was a foreigner, not a mental invalid. Ekua had been someone else’s wife entirely, but he’d had no hesitation about stealing her, had he? Perhaps it was fated, guided by the hands of Hulaili Himself that she would be ripped from him as well. This pain and happenstance was, ultimately, fair on a universal level of things. That would be the impeccably Mugrobi view of the situation.

But Havek wasn’t quite as impeccably Mugrobi as he’d like to be.

“Why would you even…” He didn’t care how painfully unseemly it was, there was some spark in him that wanted to shove his hands into the pockets of her skirt, wrench it out, curse the girl for even having the gall to claim something so precious as her own. But the whole action would be callous and mortifying, not to mention the machete blade trained on him.

“It is callow and wrong and circumvents reason," he spoke slowly. "It’s worthless—“ There was such cloying desperation in his often blank and hollow voice, it mortified him to the core. How many times can he repeat that, really. He might as well been flinging stale arguments at the slick bricks behind her than at her. It would have had the same effect.

Hava drew back, bony fingers slipping up to cradle his face for a moment of silence.

“I...I am very sorry, miss. Epa’ma.”

He had scarcely muttered the words before the syllables of monite buzzed on the back of his tongue and he spoke the spell for Woozy. If it sent her sleeping, all the better -- if it didn't, she could consider it a warning that wicks were not meant to be toyed with.

Havek’s spell was done in passion and emotion; the fire of wick magic was based on this brightness, and so the mona responded. The casting was well done and clean, even though Havek may have paused too long, his pitch quiet. He was rusty, not a wick for much use of his abilities, and so sluggishly the mona began their work. Havek felt a dim sense of feathers on his skin, a fluttery soft feeling, especially on the wreckage of his scarred eyesocket. The mona didn’t mind coming to his aid, if only he’d call more.

Murmur on the other hand, had an entirely different experience as the mona did their work. The world became blurred, as though through the bottom of a tankard that you’d downed in twenty seconds and then spun around. Her knees didn’t like all this standing, and she felt the need to sleep lightly enter her consciousness, like after a long walk. However, for a lass of the street that she was, these were normal effects of starvation. Somewhat disoriented, Murmur was far from incapacitated.

Murmur felt the change in her system as the mona did it’s work inside her and hated it. She was brought back to the market, they’d cast their spells and what not on her then, broken Fendin’s mind- invaded her body, her place. It was behind her eyes, blurring her view of Havek, in her heart slowing her beats and fluttering around her brain. They hadn’t the right, he hadn’t the right.

“Sack of spitch,” she half slurred, feeling a shaking in her knees. “What did ye do te me? I’ll kill ye…ent no one gonna magic me!”

Murmur didn’t know magic or the mona, or anything- of course she didn’t, it wasn’t her place. So the mona’s effect of her body was as strange and unwelcome as it always was, she saw the mona as an unwanted parasite, sapping something from within her and she didn’t know if the spell would slow her down or if there was a slow acting poison coursing through her veins, that even at that moment she was dying.

“I’ll kill ye!” she shouted again, waving the machete, stepping towards Havek. But what she hadnt counted on was her own body working with the spell, starvation on top of starvation, pure exhaustion from the running and the stress along with the mona.

Murmur felt woozy, felt her legs give way as she tried to stop the fall and the world from turning dark. The machete hit the ground with a twang as did the bag that had caused so much trouble.

Though Murmur couldn’t feel it at that point, she fell hard onto her hands and her face, grazing the palms of her hands and the skin on her chin breaking skin to reveal soft pink flesh underneath, had she any front teeth before- she wouldn’t have after that fall, and blood seeped from between her lips where her incisors had bitten through her tongue.

Murmur didn’t feel any of this though, she was dreaming of hot sand and glittering fish nets, like she’d been taken back to some far off life.

Havek almost felt bad that he went for the satchel before he even glanced at the girl. That went off so much better than he’d thought it would. Ekua’s face fluttered down with her into the mire. Fervent, thankful, he rushed over to his satchel and hugged it to his chest. Into the bag he slipped the machete, her sack of various useless things. He would not look through them.

He knelt down beside her, the coal black puddles seeping into the knees of his trousers. Like hungry birds, his hand snapped the spectrograph from her hand and stuffed it away into the satchel. He couldn’t bare to even glance at it. Instead, he rested his gaze on Murmur.

Thick bushel of red hair all pooled around her head. His hands were massive brown spiders, poised above her – waiting for a twitch, a moan. Silent, motionless. How to go about touching her, how odd this was. Delicately as the situation would allow, Havek rolled Murmur over onto her back, one hand cradling the space betwixt her shoulder blades. A sigh of relief hissed through the chinks of his teeth – she was bloodied, blood spanning her face like the wings of some grotesque butterfly, but she was breathing.

He did not like this. He did not like this at all.

Slow hands. Healer hands. They didn’t know what to do. they’d grappled down struggling sailors. Pried shards of metal from the meat of muscle, cut glass from sheets of fat. Swathed flame to clean thick gashes. Knit sheets of flesh back together over red pulp, never flinching. Never losing their grip on a shattered limb when all those magic words would heal, but would rip through some sailor’s body in hot metal cords of pain. Never let go. Never flinching.

This was different. It shouldn’t be, a scathing voice reminded him – sounded like Ekua, or his juela, or his witch mama. Especially Ekua. This wasn’t some sailor with tar black teeth. This was a girl. A girl who looked too much like her. Dark skin and small hands. He shook his head and jerked back. Blood, there was blood too. He ripped off a ribbon of his shirt, flimsy linen giving away easy. Fingers like ibis legs, guiding the tattered bit of cloth along the curve of her mouth. It seeped up blood, red, too red, blistleberry lip stain red. The rime of it soften and cleared away – her lips weren’t split too bad. A fingertip eased under the fold of her upper lip, easing it back – blood gullies ran between her teeth. Pooling in her mouth. The sticky cling of her spit made his hand flinch away.

The linen scrap moved up towards her nose, the crust of blood crystalizing around her nostrils. His thumb slipped from the safe place, the fabric, brushing the curve of her bloodied nostril. His fingers drifted, meandering, up over the curve of it. The slight hill of it, crossing to the otherside, following its subtle curves like the bows of a stream. One yellow eye, narrowed to a critical slit. Up, up, along the apple of her cheek, riding the edge of bone nuzzled against the skin. Freckles, maybe? Or just a smattering of dirt he’d missed. Havek leaned in for a closer inspection, the thick ropes of his hair puddling around her head. Little dark flecks. They dusted the apples of her cheeks. The bridge of her nose. Galaxies of freckles, spiraling out towards the sea shells of her ears.

His chest hurt.

It’s just a girl. Just some dirty scrap of a girl. Take it easy. Don’t crash.

His hands flinched away from her as if he’d been burned. The blood soaked bit of fabric was clenched in his fist. He settled back on his ankles. The puddles seeped into every bit of cloth they could, but he didn’t move. He folded his hands primly over his chest. Think. Think. He could still do that.

Poor wretch. Poor wretch! How horrid he’d been. Hurting her so, then touching her face. He hadn’t the right. Ruined fingernails pinched the scrap of skin stretching between his fingers. Where it hurt the most. Havek could under no circumstance leave her here. Worse than his own miserable self wandered these quiet pathways, stricken by far worse than loneliness. Men who would take horrific liberties with good women – whether this one was wholesome or not was not something to be pondered, it was too private of an affair. It mortified him to even consider it. Wholesome or not, Harbor scum was wicked.

His fingertips toyed with a thick lock of her hair. Poor girl. Poor Murmur.

Tentative, his hand slid under her back. Her blouse was soaked through, her skin was warm. The sandy alley dirt matted against the back of his hand. His other arm hooked under the curve of her knees. The bit that the skirt slid away from when he moved her, the bit her socks didn’t quite reach. Havek sighed. With one heavy lift – “Epa’ma, epa’ma...excuse me, miss. Epa’ma...” he muttered miserably -- he picked her up. His right arm was so watery weak, he teetered and almost crashed before catching his footing. The satchel on the other shoulder balanced it out.

How unseemly all of his was. He wanted to readjust his arm so it would gather her skirt up against her, not leave it hanging wide open as a clam’s mouth. Wanted to fix the buttons on her blouse, slide it back up the hillock of her shoulder –

Ekua’s dresses were always too big for her, he remembered, didn’t want to remember. Not now at least. Not here. Skinny straps always slipping down one shoulder or another. Or she’d untie the bow at the nape of her neck, letting the halter straps lay limp as noodles down her sides. Her breastbone was a polished sheet of obsidian glass, glinting in the light seeping through the casements. She held her chin high, nose up in the air like a rudder. It made her neck reed-long, too long, but he didn’t mind. It meant more of her too look at.

Havek blinked down at the placid mask of her face. Blood streaked. Freckle speckled.

“Epa’ma. I am very sorry,” he said again. Havek was sorry for a lot of things.

The walk through the Harbor was long. Glassy eyes, fish eyes, blinked after him. Curious of the bloody mess in his arms, but saying nothing. He wished some soul would have come tearing out of the crowd, shaken him by the shoulders, demanded his business with this girl. He would have loved them for that. It would’ve been so raw, so honorable.

Pity and a sin no one did.

Right now, right at this very moment, he wished Old Rose Harbor would break at the seams and go crashing into the ocean. Let them all be drowned. Let them be eaten by sharks. Havek tightened his grip on her. No one would spare a glance from the their haddock. He was scared for her, scared wondering what would have happened if he had been anyone else. It made him shiver.

But Hava Alu was a good man. He told himself that, his father told him that, Ekua told him that. He wanted to believe that. He wanted her to be safe. And she would be. “I promise,” he told Murmur’s blank face.

The rooms at the Black Dove were pitifully cheap. The roof leaked in buckets. The rooms smelled of vomit and piss. But a man can get used to anything. The reek inside was familiar. In familiarity, it was comforting. Men’s eyes wandered up from their cardgames and cheap liquor and touching themselves under the table or knife sharpening or whatever it was Anaxi dogs did. Eyes narrowed to conspiratorial slits, hearts swollen with lust.

Choke on teeth, he wanted to spit.

But instead he bobbed his head in a bow and threaded through them. One’s snaked a hand out and pawed her hair as they passed and Havek went dizzy with hate. He wanted to wrench those fingers off with a scalpel. Dig a sawbone into his flesh and do some amputation – oh please, oh don’t, don’t go there. Not back to the bleak ships, pitch dark under bellies where nothing stood between meat and saw but frowsy lamplight. Havek winced. He told her sorry again. Hava Alu was not a violent man.

Teetering up the stairs. The swollen wood groaned under his feet. His room was sparse. Havek wore his world on his back. Nothing personal littered the floor beyond that rickety wooden door. He shouldered it open, let the fires and lamps from the foyer dimly illuminate the darkness. The shadows were long here. He lay her down on the straw pallet in the corner. It was creeping with fleas, but it was nothing she hadn’t known before. Of that he was almost certain. He eased off her sodden coat and lay the dry insides over her, the caricature of a blanket. He denied the urge to let his hands fix her hair, lay it out in a corona around her head. Havek took the ragged bag of her belongings from his satchel and settled it on the floor next to her. They were hers, and they would remain hers, a kindness she had not given him.

“Epa’ma,” he told the darkness. Told the rats. Told the fleas. Told her. When he stood again, his shadow cast a huge slash over the bed pallet. Let her wake up on her own. He wouldn’t wait inside with her, no. Havek didn’t want to frighten her anymore than he already had.

I don’t scare easy, Murmur Now had insisted. He thought of his little girls, sisters-daughters, scampering along a riverbank and spitting at imagined crocodile monsters lurking beneath. I don’t scare easy! they crowed. He could hear them still. The details just get blurrier and blurrier everytime he tried.

Havek left the room, but he wouldn’t leave the hall. His back slid down the wall, settling in for a long wait. Sentinel, whatever he was trying to be, he would guard this damn door as long as he had too. He would not trust a scrap of wood to protect her from the strange-eyed beasts prowling the foyer. Sitting cocked at their tables, watching his door even as he leaned against it.

Havek bounced the flat of his machete on his knee. Let them come, if they wanted.

He could wait.

(( EoT ))